Darkness

Darkness

Darkness, Darkness, Darkness…I was so excited when I saw the preview. The sporadic flashes of mutilated children appearing in the dark, the film’s gritty appearance…it was tantalizing. In all honesty I think production companies should be FINED for screening perfectly promising trailers and then letting their audiences down while we’re sitting in stadium seats and sipping on a $5 soft drink and eating a $4 bag of popcorn ! As I sadly watched the credits roll with my mouth dropped, viewers yelled at the screen “I want my money back !”

Darkness tried so hard to be scary and suspenseful it was a joke. It was like I was watching clips of The Shining, Sixth Sense, and The Ring all bundled in one with bad editing. Three mysterious women hire a contractor to draw the blue print to a house where a supposedly horrorible occult/cult acitivity and kidnapping occurs then 40 years later…yes 40 years, a family moves in the same house and the father becomes possessed and the male child is wanted as a sacrafice/replacement by the spirits of the three women, oh yeah and the grandfather of the possessed dad is involved too. Does that make sense ? It didn’t make sense in the storyline either. The acting in Darkness was mediocre and personally, I thought Anna Paquin’s acting was the worst..although I enjoyed her performance in It’s The Rage (1999).
Well on the Joice Meter of Fight For Tickets, Wait For Hollywood Video Release’s on Tuesdays or Drive By The Theatre…I say drive by the theatre where Darkness is screening.

Cheesiest Movie Moments

2,000 British moviegoers were recently asked to identify the top three cheesiest moments in film. (The survey was conducted late last year by the British bakery Warburtons, in celebration of the launch of their new cheese-flavored crumpets, aptly enough.)

The most popular responses were:

1. Titanic: Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!”
2. Dirty Dancing: Patrick Swayze’s “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
3. Four Weddings And A Funeral: Andie McDowell’s “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”
3. Ghost: Demi Moore’s “Ditto.” to Patrick Swayze’s “I love you.”
5. Top Gun: Val Kilmer to Tom Cruise: “You can be my wingman anytime”
6. Notting Hill: Julia Roberts’ “I’m just a girl… standing in front of a boy… asking him to love her.”
7. Independence Day: Bill Pullman’s “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
8. Braveheart: Mel Gibson’s “They may take our lives, but they will not take our freedom!”
9. Jerry Maguire: Renee Zellweger to Tom Cruise: “You had me at hello.”
10. The Postman: A blind woman says to Kevin Costner: “You’re a godsend, a savior.” He replies: “No, I’m a postman.”

According to Warburtons, women opted for moments from romantic comedies, while men preferred silly scenes from action flicks. Not so surprising, really. What is surprising is that the “wearing this–wearing only this” moment from Titanic didn’t make the top ten. That would’ve been my #1 for sure…

Sin City

I prefer buying a movie and watching it at home where I have readily access to my beer and other extracurriculars rather than going to the movie theater. But this weekend, Sin City comes out, a movie that may be worth going to the theater for.

Check out the trailers: http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/sin_city/

The movie looks good, although I may have to find a way to sneak some booze in the theater. Tune into the LamLogs on Monday for a review.

The Greatest Movie Ever.

We can rant and rave about all of the new crappy movies that are out there today. We can shed tears over the Hollywood stars and their spouses splitting up. We can spend $11.50 on a single movie - only to be disappointed by the fact that it took us 2 hours working at a horrible job to save up that much money, and then just spent it on 2 hours of watching Ben Stiller in a role that we’ve already seen him in 14 times in the past 9 months. We can do all of those things. And we do. And we love every minute of it. But that’s not the point of this post…

What we don’t do enough of is celebrate those truly amazing performances that get no credit in the box office. The actor displays such brilliance in his smile, his fighting, his sensitivity, and his passion for Kindergartners that he earns himself political influence years later.

Of course we all know the breathtaking film I’m talking about…Kindergarten Cop. I recently purchased a bootlegged version off of a homeless man in downtown Seattle (the greatest city in the world) for $1. Tell me where else you can find such fine filmsmanship for $1 and I’ll GIVE you $1. Maybe even $1.50. The point here is…you can’t. And who knows what kind of foolish purchase you’d make with one of my hard earned dollars. Anyways, I nearly screamed like a little girl for Nick Carter when I popped in the movie and first caught glimpse of Detective John Kimble. Dectective John Kimball displayed strength with the bad men, and showed tough love with the little boys and girls. I respect that. I also respect former body building champions that tell little girls that they are police officers, not princesses. There’s no reason to build false images. And, “WHO IS YOUR DADDY, AND WHAT DOES HE DO!” Who’s not going to answer the question that Arnold poses to little Dominic? While sitting on my sofa, eating my popcorn, I yelled out “YOU ARE ARNOLD! YOU ARE!!” And that’s when I knew. Kindergarten Cop is the greatest movie ever.

Do Your Worst

We went to see The Aviator and it was the most suffering that I’ve gone through in a long time. Or ever.

It was a weekend matinee, and the theater was about half full, so my mind began to wriggle out of control right away when a woman sat down right next to me. The row in front of us was clear, and most of the row behind us, and five seats on either side of us. She was late-middle-aged, with a sickly bleached pageboy cut and horn-rimmed glasses. Her entire head had been dunked in what I immediately recognized as a cheap cologne called “Anaïs Anaïs”, which my mother used to wear when I was little and which my sister used to derisively call “Flowers Galore” behind her back. It gave me an instant migraine.

Flowers Galore’s next offense was her colossal ass, which leaked underneath the armrest and jutted into my thigh. Then she draped her hamhock-arm over the armrest we shared, which also touched me. Once she was snuggled up to me real nice, she hauled her purse up to her lap and began rifling and jangling through it and whipping out miscellany. the purse was the size of a newborn calf, and for awhile, I thought that must be what was shoved up against my thigh, until she put it back down and I could still feel something on my… oh, the horror. And she kept the purse-rummaging up after the movie had started–it was usually lipstick, to apply anew every half-hour, or her cellphone, to check what time it was. The cellphone was really bright and lit up her whole face. I guess that’s why she needed the lipstick.

Then the two girls behind me started their stage-whispering. When Gwen Stefani showed up, they both exclaimed “Gwen Stefani!” to each other, along with like four other people in the theater. One girl asked the other if she knew who Cate Blanchett was supposed to be. They chattered about which actresses had pretty dresses. It was a regular round-table discussion.

Meanwhile, I was watching Leonardo DiCaprio go incrementally crazier and crazier, and he was giving me permission to do the same. “Come in with the milk,” he repeated, and my brain repeated creative and profane threats. I can do that if he can. Check this out. Every new Crazy thing he did seemed more appealing than the last. Hey, YOU don’t like touching bathroom doorknobs after you’ve washed your hands? Oh my god, me NEITHER. Dude, I wish I could get away with ordering twelve peas with my steak, or cookies with ten chocolate chips apiece. I’m gonna be a billionaire just so i can do that. Imagine how great that would feel, to not have to put up with imperfection anymore!

The movie was about halfway through and I was in the supreme throes of crazy when Flowers Galore decided to start talking to the characters. If Howard Hughes ever did anything that could be construed as nutty, Flowers would criticize him. “Oh, boy, here we go again, Howard,” she told him, exasperated. When he got in his new superfast plane, she sniped, “You’re just going to crash it.” Why does Howard have to give her so much trouble?

The girls were also very reactionary. “Ewwww! Uhhhhh!” they cried in harmony when Howard was served his trout with the head still attached. When the camera cut to his living room all littered with tissues, one said to the other, “Would you look at that?” We’re all looking at it. We paid money to come here and look at it. I found the courage to wheel around a couple times and glare at them, but they didn’t notice—they were busy. Looking at it.

Tragically, both Flowers Galore and the Whisper Twins were on my side and my boyfriend was missing all of this. I would poke him and nod in their directions, not believing their gall for saying it or my good fortune for witnessing such gall, but Sean would just blink. “What?” It was all I could not to take notes.

Flowers never stopped conversing with the movie and rooting through her cauldron-purse at intervals. I managed an audible “Oh, Jesus,” but that was the best I could do; there was no way I could address her in the state I was in without coming completely unhinged. The movie focused again and again on Howard Hughes’ germ obsession, and my stomach rolled down a spiral-slide when I thought of all the diseases on this lady’s butt, rubbing against my jeans. She goes to the bathroom, then touches her pants to pull them back up. THEN washes her hands. Perhaps I’ll throw these jeans away.

So I just sat there, vibrating in agony, committing each patron’s retarded exhortations to memory. People like these shouldn’t be allowed in movie theaters. You should need a license; they should make you take a class on how to shut the hell up before they let you in. When I’m rich, I’m going to buy my own private movie theater and nobody will be allowed in but me. To calm down, I cracked all my knuckles in order, then reached over and cracked all of Sean’s. OK, maybe Sean can come in.

I’m not a hand-washer, but by the end of the film, I was jonesing to take a cue from Howard and go scrub my entire body until I bled. No one told me this was a three-hour movie, for godsake. And they stretched the ending out for an extra 20 minutes, so you knew the movie was allllmost over, but only after they let Leonardo say, “The wave of the future” about eighty times did the credits roll. As a finale, Flowers rose from her seat, turned, and clocked me right in the nose with her germy, velour-upholstered butt.

I’m seriously only renting the major Hollywood flicks from now on, or going during the day when the theaters are empty. People are jackals. It’s just too hard.

Watching from a writer’s mind

Often times, I find myself watching a movie from the perspective of a writer. This causes many interesting things to happen, including some of the following:

1.) I love the film, despite major plot holes, too much dependence on suspension of disbelief, poor acting or other glaring faults that cause others to hate the film. A great example of this came for me in the movie “Lake Placid”. Most of the critics would disagree with my adoration of this film. For example, William Arnold of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it “terribly mediocre,” and Michael Dequina of Mr. Brown’s Movies said, “The cast is game enough, but they cannot elevate the weak material beyond the watchable junk level.”

However, as a writer, I appreciated the fact that someone put some thought into this funny little horror film. Jokes were carried throughout with ease and wittiness, the one-liners came at unexpected moments, and the plot twist at the end was fantastic. While “Lake Placid” won’t make my top 10 favorites of all times list, it was definitely very clever and worth seeing.

2.) I hate the film due to lack of effort. The one that stands out the most for me in this category was “The Ring.” Everyone’s favorite scary movie of a few summers ago was my biggest disappointment. Sure, the idea was fresh and the suspense was there, but I didn’t appreciate any of that due to the fact that whoever adapted this screenplay from the original Japanese verion OBVIOUSLY was not at all familiar with Seattle, the setting they chose for the film.

Honestly, I do not know how anyone even remotely familiar with the Northwest could follow this movie without noticing the complete lack of research that went into setting this film in Seattle. For starters, the Monorail is shown in numerous shots, as if to imply that this is the number one mode of transportation for Seattlites. Secondly, throughout the movie, the rain is coming down deluge style. It does NOT constantly rain in Seattle, and on the days that it does rain, it is VERY rare for it to be as heavy as it was shown in the film. I could go on and on about this moive… about the fact that the main character refers to taking a trip “upstate,” which is NOT a term I have ever heard anyone in Seattle use, to the fact that once she IS “upstate,” and walking around in muddy fields, there is not a trace of mud on her shoes when she walks in the house.

The lesson here is simple: stick to what you know when writing. If you don’t, those who DO know will be less than impressed.

3.) On occasion, there is a film which is beautifully written, the imagery is both aesthetic and poignant, and the rest of the aspects seem to work together, as well. For me, these stars align in movies such as “K-PAX,” “Adaptation,” and “The Sixth Sense.”

In short, writers for stage and screen, please put a little time and effort into your work. There are plenty of us out there who appreciate it more than you may realize.

Hide and Seek…regrettably we found it.

Hide and Seek, where to start. Tsk Tsk Robert Deniro and Dakota Fanning. At least she is only 7 and may not have known better. First of all, I would like to state that my brain was playing hide and seek when I bought the ticket. I KNOW THAT! Anyway, when my roommate and I went to see the movie it seemed that the rest of the audience was playing hide and seek from the movie itself. The movie couldn’t find them for the life of it. The best part of the movie was me dancing in front of the empty chairs before it even started. This movie was a ripoff of other bad ‘thriller’ movies that went straight to video and hopefully the directors go straight to hell for this cinematic travesty. I’d be more thrilled watching Deniro drinking coffee and read the paper for 2 hours. That seriously is more of a thrill and chill than this superior waste of time. One of the more annoying attributes of this movie was sometimes someone would scream and would rouse me from my slumber. What I hate most about movies like this is that in the beginning there truly is potential, but the director didn’t have making a movie worth watching on his list of things to do. We went into the theater thinking we’d see a monster movie but the only monsters were the two men who came in suspiciously late, during the last 15 minutes of the ‘masterpiece’. They are either stupid or brilliant for coming in that late, but we aren’t sure which. We figured they just didn’t know where else they could pay $45 for popcorn. I would gladly berate the actual scenes and situations of the movie, but I do not want to give away the f*cking ridiculously stupid ending. The only good thing about the ending is that it meant the movie was finally over. Here is the spoiler - the murderer is you when you kill the director of this tripe.

Top Ten Things I Didn’t Like About Troy

1) Troy wasn’t burned in a day, you know.

2) How about putting some gods in this movie?

3) What’s up with making Chryseis, Brieseis, Cassandra and Klytemnestra into the same person? What, there were too many women in the Illiad?

4) While we’re at it, how ’bout some backstory on Achilles? For all the screen time he gets sulking by the ships, you’d think he’d mention his heel.

5) Um, Menelaus doesn’t die at Troy.

6) Um, Agamemnon doesn’t die at Troy.

7) Um, Ajax doesn’t die at Troy. (well, not in the battle anyway)

What’s up w/ the 12-yr-old Aeneas?

9) What’s up w/ the secret back door out of Troy?

10) How about some divine intervention here?

Gunner Palace

OK, you can’t deny that a documentary about a company of American soldiers squatting in Uday Hussein’s bombed-out palace sounds freaking awesome. That’s why I went. They’re playing the electric guitar and stuff, in the trailer? And having pool parties? It’s like anarchy over there! Then, one soldier’s rapping about how “We live in this movie,” and you’re like, dude, that’s deep.

Turns out, the whole movie is narrated by the director, who isn’t a soldier, just a cameraman who went to Iraq to make his documentary, and he ruins the entire movie with his idiotic, uninsightful observations. Seriously, the narration is just punishing to listen to. The bulk of Gunner Palace focuses not on the war and such, but on the on-camera-personalities of the soldiers. Much importance is placed on the boys hailing from various pissant farm towns, which explains why most of them seem to be nothing but a bunch of dumb, chuckleheaded bullies. There’s lots of farting and swearing and telling of unfunny jokes. Their assignments are sobering–they investigate a possible explosive, they arrange a sting on a pair of suspected terrorists–but it’s an empty promise of poignancy when nothing comes of either one.

So the point of this film seems to be lost on me, other than War is Bad, and soldiers are really just a bunch of dudes. We already knew that. Also, the music was terrible. Don’t be fooled by the trailer; Gunner Palace is, by and large, an embarrassing waste of time.

Blood Gnome (R: 2004)

Blood Gnome Released: 2004 Rated: R Director: John Lechago Starring: Vinnie Bilancio, Melissa Pursley, Ri Walton, Julie Strain

Review by Tom Baurley, March 2005

Well if this isn’t B-rate Horror, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what is. But then again, I knew what I was in for before renting it, and I’m one of those B-rate connoisseurs who actually do enjoy a little B-rate now and again. The theme is intriguing … a tribe of Cthulthu-like birthed Gnomes that dwell on blood … but not just blood, but blood letting. Taking a stab at the BDSM community and its world of blood play as an attractant to these invisible critters that you can only see once you’ve tasted their blood! But you’ll have to be quick for these boogers, as they’ll probably be tasting yours before you can get to theirs.

Definitely a cheap movie and below the barrel of b-rates. Did enjoy Julie Strain and some costume/ fetish imagery, but outside of that - cheap flick, recommend do not see, unless you are bottom-of-the-barrel bored out of your mind and have nothing else to watch. Rated 1/2 star out of 5 possible. Even with a little more budget, I’m not sure if this could have been a working title. But I like themes on the other realms … so that intrigued me in the very least with the writer’s take off on killer gnomes.

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